


Our Friends Do Not Look Fine

by CourierNew



Category: Deltarune (Video Game), Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-04
Updated: 2018-11-04
Packaged: 2019-08-17 10:34:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16514696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CourierNew/pseuds/CourierNew
Summary: It's raining somewhere else.





	Our Friends Do Not Look Fine

**Author's Note:**

> Another day older, and another day we go  
> "Oh no, alone again with all these people."  
> \- San Fermin, "Jackrabbit"

The rain began a long time ago.

The school halls lie empty and its windows look out at a sky that is slate turning to coal. The light seeping through is dingy, corroded, and in this half-light the buttery tiles turn the color of old bread and the lockers stand like pallbearers, gashed with deeper dark from the grills above and below. The shadows behind the lockers are wrong. They are too much for their containers to hold. They appear to drip and run. The only brightness comes from the bulletin boards, haphazardly pasted with drawings or notices or photographs of children waving hello or goodbye.

The raindrops pattering outside echo like the footsteps of the students’ departure; the gardens are wilting, bent double by the water’s weight. Water traces abstract patterns like notebook doodles on the window-glass. In the classroom these shapes are magnified further from the light and turn into cryptic lesson plans sprawled across the empty blackboard. The computer’s screen is blind. The chalk tray lies empty.

The desks sit in neat parallels and most are marked in their own way. Shed hairs or feathers, faint clawmarks, odd residue on a seat. One bears no such character. The tiles around the chairlegs are slashed black from the chair being pulled neatly in and out in the same way, day to day. It sits in a private nebula of buzzed air. The atmosphere around it is strangely cold.

*             *             *

“When’s the last time they even raised their hand?”

“Who cares? They’d just get it wrong anyway.”

“That’s uncalled for. You don’t know-”

“I’ve seen their papers. Let’s just say it’s pretty clear which half of the family got the brains. Though it’s not like they even-”

“Stop. Don’t go there.”

“Oh, whatever. Everyone’s thinking it anyway.”

“Yo, I don’t!”

“Who asked you?”

“I’m worried. Don’t give me that look. I see them out the corner of my eye all the time and they only ever move to take notes or get up and leave. And it’s like even when I’m looking right at them they’re still in the corner of my eye. Does that make sense?”

“Nope. Nuh-uh. Zero.”

“Dudes, it’s fine. It’s cool. They asked me for an eraser just last week and I was all, yeah, I’ve got an eraser, and then I gave them an eraser. And then they said thanks and gave it back.”

“Wow. Had me on the edge of my seat there.”

“At least, I think they said thanks. But they sounded fine. I think? I can’t remember.”

“So you’re missing your ears, too?”

“Dude, what the hell? Low blow.”

“Oh, buzz off. If you’re so concerned about them then maybe you can give them a hand.”

“Dude!”

“Yeah, you’re right. Just give them a leg up, instead.”

“These suck. You suck. I’m going home.”

“It’s no wonder they’re so quiet, with you around.”

“Don’t pin this on me. Why would they want to hang out with us, anyway? They’ve got-”

“Not for much longer.”

“Yeah. Then we’ll see how chatty they really are. Assuming they just don’t get gobbled up by you-know-who.”

“I don’t know why I even bother talking to you.”

“Because I am lord of the late fees and my powers are great and terrible.”

*             *             *

The windows throughout town have darkened. The rain passes like lonely sprites through the streetlamps’ glow. The mist turns every silhouette fuzzed, distorted. Every structure becomes an invalid parody. They slump and shiver beneath the tree branches’ tattooed shadows.

The library: bookspines’ color muted, the clock’s tick maddeningly irregular. The hospital: silent but for the pump and wheeze of its vital machinery. The chapel: its steeple’s silhouette a wound torn open in the night sky. The graveyard: memorials shifting uneasily on their foundations, the bench pearly with water. The hill at the edge of town: something groans and gnashes deep below.

The diner has been swept clean but there are marks that scouring alone cannot wipe away. The windows still bear the grease of fingerprints drawing on the fogged glass. A seat is divoted from uneven weight, knees planted on the imitation leather as though it were a church pew. Ringstains on the tabletops. Drips of chocolate on the floor. These texturized ghosts are preserved.

In a certain corner of this place where the deeper shadows congeal, the clock’s tick and the walls’ settling and the patter from the growing storm outside stirs and alchemizes into something altogether new. A relentless and percolating gossip whose syllables are just faint enough to evade understanding. It speaks only things the listener does not want to hear. It exists outside. Even if you were to still the clock, and knock down the walls, and pull away the sky so there was nothing left to produce that endless drip, the sound would yet remain.

*             *             *

“I went down to the memorials for a smoke and there they were, on the bench. Hands in their lap. Just sitting and staring. It was a beautiful day outside, perfectly understandable they’d be out, but they just sat and stared.”

“I see what you mean.”

“They have a phone, right? Everyone these days has a phone. These kids never get off the darn phones. But they just sat and stared.”

“Did you say anything?”

“Nah. They wouldn’t be there unless they wanted to be alone. Still, they saw me anyway. Maybe they said something? I don’t remember. But they gave me that look.”

“What look?”

“The look they’ve always got. You know.”

“Oh, that look.”

“Hard to put it into words.”

“Well, I sure wouldn’t call it a smile.”

“Not exactly a frown, either.”

“More like a…slightly sagging line.”

“Has a somewhat _wilted_ quality, I always thought.”

“Not just their face, either. Whenever I see them in town it’s like they can barely stand up straight. Pretty sure that’s not normal. Not even for their type.”

“Sure wasn’t like that before.”

“No mistaking the look on their face back _then._ ”

“Like when they climbed a tree and jumped onto the roof of my house, I thought their mother would die on the spot.”

“Or at that one potluck where they drank a whole bottle of soda and spent the evening trying to scare people from under the tables.”

“An absolute terror.”

“Little hell-raiser.”

“But, if I’m being honest…”

“No, I agree. Better that than whatever this is now.”

“Awful telling that we talk about what they _did_ and not what they _do._ ”

“Since they don’t seem to do _anything.”_

“Besides sit. And stare.”

“It all started when-”

“Yes, it must’ve started with that.”

“Don’t want to talk about _that.”_

“Not a topic anyone wants to broach, I imagine.”

“Get too deep into it and eventually you start pointing fingers, and that won’t end well for anybody.”

“It’s not as though it was even anyone’s fault. Not any one person’s fault.”

“That’s the whole problem, isn’t it. Some children see no one wanting to lay blame and decide they have to shoulder it all themselves.”

“Awful mature of them, considering.”

“Not in any right way. It eats you up inside.”

“And what with their brother…”

“My thinking exactly. This can’t go on.”

“Something has to give.”

“Someone should talk to the family.”

“How? I mulled it over day after day and couldn’t work up the nerve. What business is it of ours? We stir things up too much and more misery would just follow them home.”

“I suppose you’re right.”

“It’ll all work out. Just got to have faith.”

“This too shall pass.”

“Yes.”

“Mhm.”

*             *             *

The flowers are freshly watered. The soil in their pots is black as tar. In the half-light they shine in feverish gasoline colors. They gently rot in the stagnant air.

Outside now. Past the rusted truck and the dirt road beyond. In this weather the mud puckers at your ankles and pulls. If you were to fall here your body would bury itself. The treebranches print their grasping shadows and their trunks are reflected in the growing puddles that the bloated earth vomits up.

The lake stretches out into peasoup fog and its gray ice water puckers and shivers as the raindrops beat against it. The roil eats all reflection. Look down into it and you see colorless nothing.

When the flood comes it will begin here. The water will break its banks and the susurrus of its passing will be heard as it invades the shop and fills all its plants to bursting. The dividing lines of the streets will be erased. The lawns will drown. The memorial stones will at last lose their mooring and topple, and every house will fall like gravestones themselves to be swallowed by the churning loam. Soon it will happen. There is nowhere left for the water to go. It’s started to rain where it’s never rained.

*             *             *

“I was just taking my lunch. Didn’t even notice them at first. They were just kneeling there, on the bank, in the mud. Must have ruined their pants.”

“Is that important?”

“No. I didn’t mean anything by it. They were looking at their reflection and tapping the water with their hand. To make the reflection disappear, I think. Then it came back, and they made it disappear again. Over and over. I waited a while but they didn’t stop. Wouldn’t even look at me.”

“Perhaps they just didn’t want to speak to you.”

“That’s not…fine, you might have a point. Have they talked to you, at all? About anything?”

“…no, they haven’t. I’m sorry. That was out of line.”

“It’s fine. I did call out to them, eventually. They looked up and said they were okay. Or did they just say hello? I was looking right at them. I saw their mouth move. Why can’t I remember?”

“Are you feeling quite all-”

“Sometimes I see them and it’s like they’re not even there. Or only halfway there. I can’t focus. My eyes slide away. Like a word on the tip on your tongue. And sometimes it’s the other way around. Like everything around them flickers in and out. Feels as though nothing is right around them. I don’t know.”

“I have no earthly idea what you’re talking about.”

“I’m just tired, I think. Rambling. It’s been a long day.”

“Have you been drinking?”

“What? No! No. I know what I must sound like, but I’m not-”

“Do you need money? Is that what this is about?”

“I didn’t call to talk about myself.”

“Maybe you should have. Putting all else aside, you have to get out of that store. How do you think the children feel, seeing you like this?”

“I’m all right. I’m handling it. Look, this was a mistake. Calling you at this hour. You have worries enough already. I’ll let you go.”

“No, don’t. Don’t hang up. I’m sorry. Again. I keep snapping. Not good for either of us.”

“Maybe you were right. We’re just not good for each other in general.”

“It’s no excuse. Just try to take care of yourself. For their sake if nothing else.”

“I do. I am.”

“You were right, by the way.”

“About what?”

“I do worry. About them. About everything.”

*             *             *

The inside of the house is clammy and cold like sweat after the outbreak of nightmare. Spiced with decaying piecrust. A deep creak from within the walls. The weather smothers it.

In the bedroom, in the half-light, the trophies and picture frames gleam like burnflesh and the smears of rust on that broken wagon turn gangrenous. The stain broods, unnoticed. Eyes slide away from it. The house is sick. Grown rot with wet. The sound of its settling is phlegmatic. It always gasps for air. Every day it bloats a little further. There are new doors with no keys for their locks. There is a cellar and further cellars beneath. There are holes opening within and without. Turn the wrong corner and you may disappear completely.

The birdcage shudders. The air within is freezing. At a certain time of night when no one is there to see, the thin filigree of its shadow swings like a compass-needle and lies across the bed like prison bars. Every new crevice within the house is a host for deeper dark. The trophies’ idiot gleam only makes the shadows clearer.

*             *             *

“Hey. Are you awake?

“Can you hear me? I don’t know if you can hear me.

“…I guess not.

“I keep trying to talk to you before I...you know. But I can’t find you anywhere. I look for you and you’re always gone. Where do you go? And when you’re home, all you ever do is sleep.

“I wish you’d tell me what was wrong. No one else will talk about it. What should I be doing? What can I do?

“I’m not going to be around much longer, you know. Of course you know. Why wouldn’t you.

“Just…please, take care of yourself, okay?

“Believe it or not, a lot of people still care about you.”

*             *             *

The shadows grow. They grow like flooded plantlife, like the thoughts that come to you as you lay on your side and pretend to sleep. They sprout in the traceries of the rainsoaked windows and in the birdcage and beneath your bedcovers, and darker yet darker they grow.

This is no ordinary dark. Reach out now and it would feel like moss beneath your hand. Its edges are sharp. You can feel it scrape as it passes over you. It shaves you mannequin-smooth. It forces its way past your lips and down your throat and the darkness hollows you out until only darkness remains. It comes from the secret places: the doors you never opened, the dusty corners where you like to hide, the corners of your eyes and the cracks in your heart. It always finds you.

If you were to go outside. To slip out of the bed and walk barefoot out the door and onto the drenched streets where the asphalt digs like fingernails into your soles, through this illusion of other lives. You would see it. How the shadows lattice across the world, form widening palms and innumerable fingers. You would see these hands reach out through the soft wet dark.

They are my hands. They are my fingers. I am reaching now, from within and without. You can avert your eyes, or run to your secret places, or stand still and stay silent and hope that the rain will pass. Nothing will change. I will always find you.

*             *             *

You think about a world where everything is the same, except you don’t exist.

Everything functions perfectly without you.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The mirror cuts off your eyes;](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16532933) by [canbreathe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/canbreathe/pseuds/canbreathe)




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